For three-quarters of their lifetime, Hex Enduction Records & Books of Lake City, Seattle have been making the best they can of a backdrop of a global pandemic. Opening to great fanfare in November 2019, they’ve already brought a healthy dose of weirdness to the suburbs. We spoke to Dean Whitmore about setting up and fitting in.
Deluxe: For those unacquainted, give us the Hex Enduction story. Who are you guys, when did you open… and why!
Dean Whitmore: Hex Enduction is my best pal Tom Ojendyk and my life partner Gabi Page-Fort and I. Tom and I do the records and Gabi does the books. Tom and I have been scheming about opening a shop at the weekly big beer get-togethers we've had for the last 20 years, and when it was time for me to change jobs I finally just decided to pull the trigger on it and do it. I only wish I'd done it sooner.
D: I’ve spoken to a bunch of shops over the years who have shops named after albums and artists (recently Transmission, End of An Ear, World of Echo) - How did you land on the name Hex Enduction?
DW: There was a shop in Seattle run by Nils Bernstein (who went on to do publicity at Sub Pop and Matador) called Rebellious Jukebox which is a Fall song title. We thought that was a great name and reference for a record store we might own, and riffed our way to Hex Enduction Records and Books. Hex Enduction Hour is the Fall album title.
D: Are you all big fans of Mark E Smith and The Fall?
DW: Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if there was another band that put out as much music as they did that was so consistently great. Maybe Billy Childish and Guided By Voices… Not tons of others.
D: For someone who remains quietly interested in The Fall, is Hex Enduction my best jump off point?
DW: [laughing] I don't know if it's the best jump off point. I think your first record you get from a band tends to have a special place for you. The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall was my first.
D: What would be your top five Fall moments to lock in a prospective fan?
DW: Live at the Witch Trials and Dragnet are great. Tom mentioned Grotesque, This Nation’s Saving Grace, Slates. I'm a fan of their late 80s records I Am Kurious Oranj and The Frenz Experiment too. Like I said they were making such consistently great records that for me, anything up through the 80s I could recommend without hesitation. I know people who swear by late period records too. I hit a couple that weren't for me and just figured I'd keep it to their first 17 records! [laughing]
“We get to share and learn from each other and feel the full force of the fucking weirdness and beauty of human interaction. Which is what it’s all about.”
D: The last arduous year aside for obvious reasons, how are things going with you guys and how are you enjoying store life?
DW: In short, I'm loving it. I had undervalued how much I'd appreciate the social aspect of the job. Plus I'm learning so much about new bands and artists from these people. It's definitely a bit stressful at times, but being able to have say over almost every single thing to do with your day to day life is really, really liberating. Luckily people are responding well and things here are trending upwards every month. Hoping we can get things revved up a couple notches and then we coast on Tom's good looks from there.
D: If you were giving someone an elevator pitch introduction to Hex Enduction, what is the vibe? What do you guys do well?
DW: What do we do well… Well we're trying to be a good neighbourhood shop that leans a little highbrow. Music is such a subjective thing, but I'd like to think that we specialise in carrying quality records without regards to popularity. We're shooting for ‘all killer no filler’. That's for the books too. Our space limitations require us to be choosy, and it's been freeing to not have to carry whatever is the most popular thing of the day.
D: I always love talking about logos too, who created your logo and what was the inspiration?
DW: David Day, the owner of Jive Time Records here in Seattle, did our logo. He does lots of cool design stuff, makes prints etc. He just asked me if I minded if he did a few logos just for fun and of course I didn't and he came up with something that spoke to the name but didn’t point to the reference which I thought was perfect. He did some other versions that were rad too. One had a straight-faced snail sliding along in front of the black hole that made me laugh. We may have to see about doing a t-shirt of that one at some point.
D: You’re based in Lake City, Seattle. What does that part of the city have going on and how do you fit in?
DW: Well we used to have a great Value Village thrift store out here (laughing). There's not tons going on culturally honestly. We’re a bunch of misfits and just fine with that. It is unique in that it feels like the old Seattle that got torn down and overrun over the last 30 years. We're located between a dive bar called the Back Door and Emerald City Tattoos so I would say that we could be a part of the cultural epicentre here. There are a lot of weirdos and interesting people out here, and they're pretty surprised and psyched about us being here. We also get kids from neighbouring towns that don't want to go into the heart of the city. I like being outside of the centre. We were having shows at the shop before things got shut down. They were really fun with people spilling out on the street and going back and forth between us and the Back Door.
D: As an outsider, Seattle still feels like a big global musical city. Again ignoring the recent lack of live music, does the city still feel vibrant?
DW: Yeah, I’m sure there's still lots of people out here making cool music. It's hard to have a grip on whether it feels vibrant or not right now not really being able to interact with people etc. It doesn’t seem like tons of local records have come out, no shows have been happening.
Definitely a weird time to assess and respond to that question.
D: How about yourself personally, what is your first and most formative record store experience?
DW: Rebel Records in the Renton Highlands. My friend got $20 a week allowance which was a ton for a 7th grader at my school, and we'd accompany him and suggest what he should buy and then go listen to them at his house. I remember having my mom take me there to buy a Sex Pistols book and hoping she didn't ask what I got.
D: Do you remember your first purchase?
DW: Van Halen II on LP at Budget Records in Renton. I went for the first LP and they were out so I got II. Not as good, but I was STOKED.
D: Which shops have inspired you personally and professionally?
DW: Lots of them really. Fallout Records was a shop in Seattle that meant a lot to us. Mississippi is a shop that's inspiring to me currently. Academy Records, Domino Record Shack, End of An Ear… The list goes on and on really. I like all the shops in Seattle for different things. I thought a lot about Jive Time, Sonic Boom, Easy St, Wall of Sound, Everyday etc when starting up our little shop and got a lot of good advice from them too.
D: What has been the best and the worst experiences of shop life at Hex so far?
DW: Losing a couple regulars was the saddest experience of shop life so far. Operating a retail store in the middle of a global pandemic has been a challenge, which everyone knows, though we have been healthy and lucky so far. As far as the best, the in-stores were amazing and something we look forward to doing again once it's safe.
D: Now we both know full well that record stores remain of huge cultural importance, but tell me - in the age of computers and the internet and rolling social media - why is Hex Enduction still a vital and important part of your community?
DW: We haven’t been here long but even so, the people in the community have been really vocal about their excitement about having a place to commune. Being able to find so much once-obscure music online is pretty amazing and there is a convenience to it, but it can also be cold and impersonal. Communicating through a keyboard, you can only express so much. The folks who walk through our doors (or any record/book store's doors) are generally curious-minded and passionate about art or literature, and we look at them as fellow fans instead of just consumers / customers. We get to share and learn from each other and feel the full force of the fucking weirdness and beauty of human interaction. Which is what it’s all about.
Communication. Expression. Inspiration. I mean I buy records online too, but I don’t know if I’ve ever left an online shopping experience feeling as if my spirit has been uplifted, and it’s happened literally hundreds of times for me at a record store. [laughing] So fuck you internet!
Just kidding, keep bringing me cool records, cheap webernet gods!
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